Hotels 'should offer family rooms for wheelchair users'

A woman has called for hotels to be more accommodating for families with a wheelchair user.

When Lizzy Simms, 44, and her partner Buzby Allen travel with their two children, they have often struggled to find an accessible room for a family of four.

Mr Allen, 64, has limited mobility and has used a wheelchair since experiencing a bleed on the brain last year.

Ms Simms, from Hopton, Norfolk, said hotel chains acted as though when someone got a wheelchair, "your children magically disappear”.

The family want hotels to provide rooms to enable children with a disabled parent "the chance to get away, like everyone else".

Ms Simms has started a petition calling for hotels to be obliged to offer accessible rooms for families.

"What we are asking for really isn’t that much. It’s a wetroom and wider doorways," she told BBC Radio Norfolk.

Kimberley Myhill, from Equal Lives, a disability rights organisation, said: “There is an assumption that disabled people don’t have money to spend.”

She said wheelchair users often did not stay at hotels due to accessibility issues.

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